


Hindsight

by onymousann



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Beta Wanted, F/M, Hurt Bucky Barnes, M/M, Multi, POV Peggy Carter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 05:54:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13140456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onymousann/pseuds/onymousann
Summary: Peggy in retrospect: She’s right that he loves her. She’s wrong about how much.





	Hindsight

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetaed.
> 
> A take on Peggy’s thought process regarding her relationship with Steve and Steve’s relationship with Bucky.
> 
> Did she ever wonder about how close the two seemed to be?
> 
> Did she ever consider that Bucky could, potentially, have been a very real threat?
> 
> That if Steve had to choose between them, Peggy or Bucky, the choice might not have fallen so easily in her favor?

—

  
     

     Margaret Carter realizes later that she hadn’t been first.

     There’d been a rift, jagged and painful between Steve and his best friend; courtesy of the war, of the painful memories that came from surviving torture at the hands of a crazy nazi scientist...and she’d managed to slip in only because of it—unknowing and unrepentant.

     She’d seen the looks James would cast Steve’s way.

     Dark. Haunted. Covetous.

     At first she’d attributed it to jealousy.

     Because, outwardly, Steve had become so much _more_ with the serum. A literal epitome of human perfection, strength, loyalty, integrity...

     Steve was the Sun where James was all shadow.

     Whatever he’d been through in Zola’s torture chamber had broken the man. He’d come back shattered. Full of jagged edges that jut out sharply, dangerous to anyone who came too close.

     There was longing there too, when James would look at Steve. Tangled up in the dark depths of that crystalline gaze.

     She’d ignorantly concluded that James envied Steve’s success. Wanted it for himself.

     But Steve thought the world of his best friend. His _Bucky_.

     Where Steve was concerned, there could be no fault found within the other man.

     Even though the distance James kept fervidly between them following his rescue clearly pained the blonde. 

     Despite the fact that James didn’t seem to much like Peggy—whom Steve obviously adored.

     In point of fact, where Peggy was concerned James was unfailingly polite. Courteous, cool. Something that seemed to unnerve Steve who swore that Bucky had always had a way with women. Had loved them almost as much as _they_ had loved _him_.

     The stories Steve would tell about Bucky’s unfailing charm, seemed grossly exaggerated.

     This man, whoever he was, could barely stand to hold a conversation with Peggy, nevermind _charming_ her.

     And there was something else. A sort of charged energy that passed between the two men whenever their paths crossed.

     They could be in the middle of a conversation, Peggy and Steve, but the moment the blonde caught sight of James his attention became divided, his eyes following the dark-haired man thirstily until he fell once more out of sight.

     Even if Peggy managed to recapture Steve’s attention for moments at a time, the supersoldier’s gaze would undoubtedly be drawn back to his best friend.

     The same could be said of James, though he wasn’t quite as obvious about it.

     It was there in the watchful scrutiny of his gaze—if one knew to look. Those eyes devoured the blonde supersoldier, even within the brevity of the glances he would cast Steve’s way.

     Eventually it clicked: _James was in love with Steve._ And Steve wasn’t entirely unmoved by James himself.

     And though her initial reaction was to be somewhat scandalized, slowly she’d come to realize that that connection between the two, however strained, kept Steve from being wholly hers.

     But she _wanted_ him. _All_ of him. All to herself.

     She’d been arrogant. Thinking to allow Steve a chance to get it out of his system. That once he had satisfied whatever desires he had regarding his best friend, he’d return to her happier and more steadfast in their relationship.

     The resultant decision hadn’t been a particularly difficult one to reach. She was open-minded, and James was _beautiful_.

     Self-assured and overconfident of the outcome, she’d made the choice rather easily— _foolishly_ , she thinks, later.

 

                   *            *              *

 

     She’d set it up perfectly. Both men were on temporary leave. She and Steve had decided to make time together and James had disappeared into a nearby bar.

     Though he seemed to want to avoid Steve—and thereby any evidence of Steve’s publicly-acclaimed relationship with Peggy—the dark-haired man was never too far away.

     A fact that Peggy intended to shamelessly exploit.

He’d been informed via one of her messengers that Ms. Carter had matters to discuss with him. Peggy had strictly instructed that the message be delivered thirty minutes from the time of her request.

     The plan worked seamlessly.

     Steve was between her thighs, driving her closer to orgasm with every thrust of his hips when the knock came and Peggy breathlessly called for James to enter.

     James stepped inside, expression going from dark resignation to shocked arousal in an instant, his eyes darting from Peggy’s prone form to lock onto Steve’s, the supersoldier unable to halt his own orgasm as it came crashing down on him at just that instant.

     “ _Bucky_!” Steve gasped as he caught sight of the other man, cock spasming deep within Peggy’s channel.

     James’s expression had shut down, jaw clenched tightly as he kept one hand in a white-knuckled grip on the knob of the closed door. He looked like he wanted to bolt, but his feet wouldn’t unstick from the floor.

     He was also unmistakably hard, his trousers distended noticeably at the front.

     “What the hell is going on here,” James croaked, voice bleak with something like betrayal.

     “James,” Peggy replied, as composed as she could make herself with Steve still buried between her thighs and still completely hard, “I sent the messenger. Steve didn’t know anything about it. Now come closer, don’t linger at the door; I’ve a proposition for you.”

     James took his hand slowly away from the doorknob but made no move to come any farther into the room, his gaze hard and angry and unwaveringly focused on Peggy.

     Peggy sighed, and continued with her proposal regardless.

     “I’ve become aware of some of the... _complex_ emotions that run between the two of you,” she began, “and I thought to try to help smooth some of the upset.”

     James raised a brow, a humorless sarcastic tilt to one side of his mouth and gritted out scathingly, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

     Peggy rolled her eyes.

     “James, please don’t insult me. I’m not _blind_. I’ve seen how you two look at each other—yes Steve you too”, she stated as the blonde sputtered above her. “You both devour each other with your eyes whenever you think no one is watching.”

     She watched James’s eyes narrow, and bullied on.

     “Well _I’ve_ been watching. And I think that...” She brushed a fond hand through the blonde strands of hair falling into the blue of the supersoldier’s eyes above her and continued, “I don’t want to give you up, Steve. I’m too selfish for that.

     “But maybe,” she went on, glancing over at James where he stood, still as stone and just as expressive, “maybe I wouldn’t mind sharing.”

     Steve let out a shocked breath and James’s mouth fell open, completely dumbfounded.

     “You, _what_...?” the dark-haired man stammered astonished, unable to complete the sentence.

     “I want Steve to be happy,” Peggy answered firmly. “And I’d like for you to find some happinesses as well, James. I know you two love each other. I’d feel quite heartless, keeping that happiness from you if I had the means to give it. And really,” she continued, “it’s not like it’s much of a hardship for me. Have you _seen_ yourselves? You’re gorgeous.”

     James shook his head, running a hand through his dark locks and glancing around the room as if he wasn’t sure he wasn’t hallucinating.

     “ _Steve_?” He croaked, Sounding lost, his voice wrecked.

     Steve licked his lips, pupils blown wide, and Peggy could feel his answer, hard and throbbing inside her.

     “Buck,” Steve breathed. “I’d— _yeah._  I’d like that a lot. If you wanted to...with me and Peggy.”

     Something within James’s features softened when he looked upon his friend, the man he was in love with, and Peggy was counting on that sentiment to propel her plan forward.

     James, she knew, would give Steve whatever he asked for, as much as he was able. And it helped that he wanted Steve, himself— _needed_ him, if the way he gazed at the blonde was any indication.

     Faced with the decision, he’d have to be a lot stronger to give up whatever from of relationship with Steve Peggy’s arrangement was offering.

     She saw the moment James gave in to that need and tried not to allow her triumph to show.

 

                    *            *             *

 

     James was hesitant with them at first.

     While it seemed he knew Steve’s body intimately, and Steve knew his—something she had not thought to expect—he was careful about coming between her and Steve.

     He responded well to suggestions, “Use your mouth on her, Buck, she likes that,” and was extremely talented when it came to making her come in a multitude of ways—many of which were new even to her. But he really came alive when he was touching Steve, or when Steven’s hands were on _him_.

     When that happened, he’d reach a level of desperation she could never hope to bring him to on her own.

     The control he displayed as he mastered her body, bringing her to completion over an over again, eyes burning like cobalt embers, shattered: spiraled into messy pleas, desperate moans, and urgent cries beneath Steve’s attention.

     Even if he was buried inside her to the hilt, angling his hips _just so_ , perfect for making her shout; if Steve touched him, stroked a hand down his flank, or began mouthing at his neck, he’d moan gutturally, hips stuttering before picking up speed, pounding into Peggy until they both came loudly.

 

                     *             *            *

 

     It comes to her slowly.

     One night as she watches them move together from where she lays, sated and sleep-heavy on their shared bed, having already come multiple times between the combined lips, fingers and tongues of the other two men, and then once more on Steve’s cock.

     Their hips roll together, slow and in sync. Like a dance they’d perfected long ago. Their eyes stay locked together. Private thoughts only they share seem to pass between them as Steve slides a hand across a hip and James _shudders_ at the touch, squeezing their laced fingers together more tightly where they rest above his head.

     They come nearly together. James arches back, neck straining, full lips parted as he spills near-silently over his belly, and Steve moans deeply in completion, pressing his forehead down to meet that of the man’s beneath him—and still their eyes never part.

 

                     *             *             *

  

     When James falls Steve is inconsolable.

     And Peggy begins to realize that she’d  never really had him. That their relationship—never meant to last—had bloomed, fragile and fleeting, only in the absence of one James Buchanan Barnes.

     She’d _never really had him_ , and she can’t stop him from chasing after James.

     Steve slips from her life, from the strength of her grip, as easily as smoke through grasping fingers.

     And she remembers the haunted gaze James used to turn their way. The dark despair in his eyes when he believed Steve lost to him—stolen away, in love with Peggy.

     And she wants to laugh bitterly.

     Because she knows now that she never had a chance. She was _never_ going to be strong enough to keep Steve. She’d been only a temporary delay in an inevitable outcome.

 

                     *             *             *

 

     The day Steve brings James to visit, over seventy years later, his joy is near tangible. It spills out of him, filling even the farthest corners of Peggy’s hospice room with the incandescent glow of his euphoria and she’s sure she’s never seen him so _happy_.

     James is shy—and isn’t _that_ a revelation! She’d never seen him anywhere _near_ shy—ducking his head so that his dark hair slips forward, covering his expression. But she can feel his assessing gaze, sharp as ever, unsure of where they stand—she, Steve’s publicly acknowledged former love, and him, the dark secret, kept between the three of them.

     He can’t possibly expect that Peggy could still hold some claim over Steve, seventy years older and nearing the end of her life. Yet even so, Peggy can sense his unease.

     Age and experience, and—more significantly—having known a love of her own, one greater than she’d ever dreamed she’d know, allow for a graciousness her younger self had not possessed during the war.

     “Come here James,” she says warmly, holding out a hand to him. “Come and tell me how you’re keeping Steve out of trouble. Or trying to, at least,” she adds with a wink.

     Steve stutters with feigned offense, but even her old eyes can see the love that pours off of him when he gazes at the dark-haired man who—she‘d come to realize—had always held his heart.

     Theirs is a connection that has spanned generations, has survived the most dire of circumstances, has overcome even death.

     She’s humbled by it. And wishes them all the happiness their love destines for them in the years ahead.

     James steps forward, a sparkle of that happiness bright in his azure eyes, and places a hand gently in hers.

 

                     

 —End.

 

 


End file.
